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Loneliness: a Gateway

I experience loneliness at times. I have been living outside of my home country, away from my family now for seven years. Even if I were at home i have no doubt that a feeling refered to as “loneliness” would arise in me on occasion. But these days I am coming to see it in a more comprehensive context. I am beginning to understand the influences that formed my identity in the earliest years of my existence that are inseparable from this sense of loneliness that arises at times. I am coming to see how deeply influenced and conditioned, however unconsciously much of it still might be. Much of what I do today is a direct consequence of underlying thoughts; a consequence of the search to find a balance between acceptance or not, and if not how I might be able to come to cope and respond to the experience of feeling separated and/or rejected.

In my search of acceptance I am now aware of how there was an abandonment of what was authentic, and in my rebellion against external influences pressuring me to conform how I have come to cope with the fear of abandonment, separation and isolation through adopting certain behaviours. There always seemed to exist the presence of fear, a product of social and cultural conditioning and other external pressures I suspect. It was of a quality that caused me to become disoriented from what was true in my self. I seemed to be caught in a constant dance and effort to avoid and over ride the fear and at times to stifle it in finding acceptance.

I now see that the loneliness that I experience is a much more complex experience than I have been aware of and I am able to utilize these moments of awareness of it as an entrance into deeper realisation that will more than likely challenge my ability to conceptually articulate and express it. Possibly it is of the quality of energy that is more disposed to artistic expression.

In coming to awareness of what this experience of loneliness is and how it has manifested in me I am discovering that I am more able to find refuge in awareness and authenticity realized in time spent alone and in silence.

IRIS PHOTOGRAPHS

So we have to understand the existence, this life, our relationship to society. We have not only to understand our relationship with each other, with society, but to bring about a radical change in that relationship. And that is our responsibility. I do not think we feel this urgency. – Krishnamurti